Let the rich pay more

Suddenly, the higher-education landscape has changed overnight. The announcement of a merger between Imperial and University College London, followed by the news that Sir Richard Sykes, the boss of the proposed new mega-university, wants to charge fees of £10,000 a year, has ushered in a new era. One minute we were in the old Soviet-style age of higher education as a command economy; the next, we are facing the capitalist future. Only the most nimble or the most powerful institutions will survive.

The Government is proposing to set the universities free in its White Paper scheduled for the end of November. The idea is to let them charge more than the heavily subsidised flat rate of £1,100. We are in favour of well-heeled students being made to pay more. Why should they benefit from what has hitherto been a generous subsidy to the better-off and better-educated? The problem is, as Gordon Brown is saying to his colleagues in government, charging hefty fees will send out the wrong message to the disadvantaged sections of the community who have not traditionally thought that a university education was for them.

One answer is to cap fees to make sure that universities can't charge more than, say, £10,000 a year. Another is to bring back grants to pay for the living expenses of students from poorer families. The White Paper is expected to include the new grants, to be called Higher Education Maintenance Awards, which will be based on the grants being given to further-education students. We understand that ministers have still not decided whether to target this money on the most needy students or whether to spread it more thinly over a larger number. We would favour the former but we understand that the Government may opt for the latter.

Ministers will have a hard job selling higher fees to middle-class voters, particularly when planning to remove those voters' pension subsidy as well. But we think that they should. It cannot be right that taxpayers who traditionally don't use higher education have to subsidise the degrees of the offspring of Britain's professional classes. Universities have been starved of funds; they desperately need more money to compete in the global higher-education marketplace. They should be charging the rich enough to subsidise the poor.